The View From 1776

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The TSA and Obamacare
by Robert Curry

I blush to confess that after 9/11 I thought it made sense for the federal government to take over airport security. 

But look at what a mess the government made of it!

The TSA is a vastly expensive government jobs program which bullies citizens while conducting a kind of security theatre of the absurd.

It actually makes elaborate efforts to prove that it is not looking for terrorists trying to get on airplanes!

This totally crazy policy results in random searches of WWII veterans, little old ladies and small children. Citizens must take their turn at being the victims of thorough searches, while people (women? men?) in burkas and middle Eastern-looking young men are waved on to face a procedure that is designed to try to prevent anyone getting on an airplane with a container of shampoo.

Evidently the passenger lists are not even checked against the government’s various lists of suspected terrorists.  It can’t be done, says the TSA. 

I am certain the TSA can’t do it, or much else.  Headed by Janet Incompetanto and staffed by people who could not get hired at the Post Office, the TSA, together with the IRS, is the face of the federal government for the ordinary American citizen. Thanks to Obamacare, our relationship with the federal government is about to get a lot more intimate, and as unavoidable as the IRS itself.

And this is no mere inconvenience.  Just like being the victim of terrorism, health care is a matter of life and death.

When the government finally takes over health care, imagine the lines we’ll have then.

What will our Health Minders then be bullying us about, I wonder.

My guess is that it will at first be the “epidemic” of overweight.

When health care has been fully governmentalized, the public (no longer private) problem of overweight will be a policy crisis and our political masters will be under pressure “to do something.”

What? Bloomberg has shown the way: “we must crack down now on sugary drinks, salt, smoking or the government will be crushed by the costs of health care.” 

Then the next problem will be making certain that everyone is meeting federal exercise standards.  “We need for everyone to prove that they are meeting exercise standards and we need to design sanctions (that is, punishments) that will force people to get off the couch and get moving.”

Oh yes, and by the way you were correct, Obamacare is unconstitutional.  The Supreme Court was wrong about Obamacare, as it has been wrong so often. 

In fact violating the Constitution was the real point of Obamacare. That is why this vast bill was passed without debate and without even being read by any member of Congress when the vote was taken.  

So what if it is absurd, unworkable, a trainwreck in the making; when the government controls your health care, limited government as envisioned by the Founders is gone.

And that was the whole point of it, really.

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Obama has spent more time (and taxpayers’ money) traveling about the country making campaign-style, fund-raising speeches during his four-plus years in office than any other president in history.

Only on a few occasions has he deigned to invite senior Republican legislators to meetings at the White House.  When Republicans expressed objections to some of the president’s policies, he curtly dismissed their concerns by declaring, “I won.”

When his recent speechifying tour failed to arouse public opinion in support of his proposed expansion of gun control, the president bitterly chastised Democrat/Socialists and Republicans alike in a press conference speech.

Thomas Jefferson, who famously observed that the best government is the one that governs the least (in contrast to liberal-progressive collectivism), approached matters very differently.

Jon Meacham, in his Pulitzer Prize wining biography, Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power, wrote:

“From his time spent in the Confederation Congress and presiding over the Senate for four years as vice president, Jefferson appreciated how to handle lawmakers…a president’s attentions meant the world to politicians and to ordinary people alike.  For all his low-key republican symbolism, Jefferson understood that access to the president himself could make all the difference in statecraft - hence his dinners with lawmakers and his willingness to receive callers…

“The president had to be able to trust lawmakers with insights and opinions that he might not offer to a broader audience, creating a sense of intimacy and common purpose.  Making speeches at other politicians - or appearing to be only making speeches at them - was not the best way to enlist their allegiance or their aid, nor to govern well.”

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